Thursday, July 31, 2008

Lucky you, you're off to Beijing, perhaps a well-earned perk of slaving away on a CPG you once thought you wouldn't touch with a ten-foot vaulting pole. Wish I was going with you, sigh. (Hey, not too late, need a translator? my bags are packed!)

As someone who's been lucky to enjoy several opportunities to visit China and to witness its stunning cultural (and consumer) evolution since 1982…two words of advice: bring loot. Lots of it. Day to day China runs on a gift economy. Translators, concierges, drivers, guides all expect booty, and, though they won't mention anything, so do your hosts, but forget Tiffany keychains or pricey Polo shirts--counterfeits can be had over there for a song and recipients won't appreciate the subtle difference between real and fake. What they will appreciate are things you'd never think to take, things you might be insulted to receive yourself:

bottle of multivitamins (Centrum and Costco are favorite brands) Yes, there are supplements in China, but lots of counterfeits, so people prefer vitamins bought overseas.

Lots of smokers in China, a habit you may not want to encourage, but smokes are appreciated. Ironically, American cigs are readily available and cheaper over there than most good Chinese brands (tobacco media bucks shunned here flood overseas markets) so pick up Zhong Hua cigarettes in duty free…or bring cigars instead. (Davidoff is a good brand)

calendars with photos of your hometown (especially if your hometown is a "famous" brand like New York or Toronto)

CDs with music that is considered American - blues, jazz, gospel

If you're looking to impress a host or bribe an official for something really big--MP3, IPOD, USB stick, digital camera. Even though a lot of these items are made in China, they're quite a bit cheaper over here and the Chinese may be the only people in the world who still associate the US with quality.

What NOT to give:

scissors, knives or other cutting utensils (unless you wish to indicate intention to sever your relationship)

anything with the number four (considered unlucky number--for this reason, don't give four of anything)

And you should know: When giving a gift (or even a business card), don't be barbarian. Always present (and receive) card or gift with both hands. To do otherwise shows extreme lack of respect. Polite people generally don't open gifts when they receive them, and if they are old-school, may refuse gifts three times before accepting them. No need for wrapping, Chinese generally present gifts au naturel, or in a bag--but if you do wrap, don't use white, blue or black paper.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

I couldn't have answered this better than Lenore Skenazy who writes for The New York Sun , the new best newspaper in New York:

..So much has been lost since [1962]...when men wore hats with sly little feathers, and women wore dresses that looked ready to twirl on a music box. And what have we gotten in return? Oh right. My job. Feminism. Civil rights. Pilates. Is it worth the trade off? Here's a look:

LOST

MEN IN HATS: Why oh why have these gone the way of the cha-cha-cha? Men looked better in hats — taller, richer, smarter. They looked great taking them off, too, as a sign of respect. What simple gesture can men do now to show their respect to a woman? Unlock the car door using their key-chain remote? Oh boy. I'm swooning.

WOMEN IN HATS: We looked better too.

THE BRILLIANCE OF BRILLIANTINE: The only men still slicking back their hair these days are the villains in action movies. And yet, even the dweebiest guys in "Mad Men" look polished because their hair is polished. It shines. It stays in place. And when it doesn't, it gets put back there several times a day. The results of an informal survey of the men in my office disclosed exactly how many of them even carrying a comb? Zee-ro. And yes, these are guys who still have hair.

BRAS THAT DID ALL THE WORK: Exercise all you want, ladies, we will never look as good as the women in Mad Men. They're so shapely, it's as if someone taped party hats up there. "Those were firm bras," Nancy Deihl, a historian at the Fashion Institute of Technology, explains. "If you had the bust, it got shaped. If you didn't, there was lots of structure available, padding (not just from below, like our Wonderbra), concentric circles, batting." Let's hear it for concentric circles.

STATION WAGONS: How did we ever decide these weren't cool? How did we ever decide chunky, clunky SUVs are? In SUVs, the back seat faces forward. Sorry about that, kids.

POSTURE: They had it. We lost it. Ms. Deihl, the professor, again explains what was going on: "Posture was really emphasized in the beauty magazines of the '50s and early '60s. Think about the movie stars — Cary Grant, Gregory Peck: tall and lean." Carrying yourself right was more important than working out back then. It still is — guys just don't know it.

MEAT: And here's the secret women today don't know: Meat is important, too — on them. The "Mad Men" women have some meat on their bones, an extra 10 pounds they'd be working like crazy to get rid of today. A little roundness made their skin look young and their legs look nice. In the show, at least, everyone also always seems to be eating meat — steaks sizzling with fat or home-cooked roast beef, and no one is talking about cholesterol. Not even the doctors. Of course, they're weren't talking about the rampant alcoholism, either. But still. It would be nice to eat more steak.

VESTS: Nowadays, they make a guy look like a lawyer. But when everyone was wearing them, they just looked great. Same with cuff links. Same with a smirk.

LUNCH HOUR: Imagine a time when people actually took off a whole hour to eat someplace else. They felt they deserved a little break, and their boss agreed. Even as I write this I am picking at the chicken kebab next to my keyboard.

So what have we gained?

THE PLUS SIDE

POST-LUNCH SOBRIETY: When you're eating a chicken kebab at your desk, you're not going out for any three martini lunches. I guess that's progress.

A SMOKE-FREE WORK ENVIRONMENT: It's great we don't have to smell cigarettes at work. Now we can smell the kebabs.

PANTYHOSE: Whoopee. We've got 'em, the women in "Mad Men" don't. They all seem to be wearing stockings held up by garters. How do we know? The drunk guys are always trying to paw them off. (See cable TV, above.)

SELF-SERVICE ELEVATORS: I'm really relieved no one is pressing the buttons for us anymore. Also relieved we get to grab our own paper towels in most bathrooms, too. But I'm kind of sorry we have to pump our own gas, at least when we're not in New Jersey.

CELL PHONES: No longer do we need an operator to place a call. No longer do we even need to be in the office to make that call. The phone is wherever we are. So is our office! And our work! And — oh wait. I meant to put that in the "lost" column.

Monday, July 28, 2008

If you're a young creative still on your first job, here's a question from a friend who's updating a book about breaking into the business: in what form did you show your prospective boss your portfolio? Hard copy? DVD? Website? Hologram? No correct answers, no cash prizes, just undying appreciation.

Typewriter fonts available in 1962. (Not shown: IBM selectric’s “Orator” font– meant for typing speeches and scripts to be read at arm’s length from a podium or script stand.) Click on photo for more readable display.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first presidential candidate to use TV commercials, though he was skeptical about using the new medium. Here, a homemaker speaks upwards as if to the heavens, "High prices are just driving me crazy." Eisenhower immediately cuts in and answers benevolently, "It's another reason why I say it's time for a change."

Ike's opponent, Adlai Stevenson, wouldn’t appear on television because he thought it demeaning to a man ascending to the presidency. Instead, he had his daughter do commercials for him, literally singing his praises, adulatory as Obama Girl.

Ike answered this with his own musical spot, produced by Roy Disney, Walt's brother. Note similarity to the animation and opening march music of the "Mickey Mouse Club". Roy later produced "Our Friend The Atom", an animated commercial for the White House's "Atoms for Peace" campaign.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

I remember when, like her, I was finally promoted out of the secretarial pool into an office. (No cubes in those days.) I was so glad for a door, I didn't care that my office was actually a closet I had to share with storage boxes from the Promotions Department.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Andrew Warhola started out as an illustrator for shoe ads, one of which won him an Art Director's Club Medal in 1959. He crossed from commercial world into art by exhibiting his shoe drawings in a NYC gallery but never lost his fascination with advertising and commercial culture.

In 1964, he staged an exhibit called "The American Supermarket", a show held in Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery. The show was presented as a typical small supermarket environment, except that everything in it—the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc.—was created by six prominent pop artists of the time, including the controversial (and like-minded) Billy Apple, Mary Inman, and Robert Watts. Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500, while each autographed can sold for $6. (Imagine the regret of shoppers who one day, too busy to go dinner-shopping, popped the top and threw away the can.)

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

A relative informs me he can't read Ad Broad at the office because his company bans blogspots--if you try to call one up on the screen you get a blackout box containing message from the CEO: "This IP is for business use only. Love, George."

I told him corporate surveillance ain't no excuse and directed him to a couple of sites (this one and this one) to help get him to the blogosphere even from the depths of his daily containment. Which you reading this obviously already know how to do.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

As I think I've mentioned, I've grown inured to lack of customer service, grown accustomed to sales clerks who avoid eye contact as they ring up my stuff, chatting loudly in a language I can't understand, not to me but to the clerk in the next aisle; I've come to expect that returning something to a store is such an onerous process that I'm inclined to keep the unwanted item if I can't mail it back…so imagine my delight to discover that customer service still exists, alive and well in the American Midwest. Here, clerks make small talk, looking you straight in the eye. Friendly folks greet you as you walk in the door. Savvy retailers, instead of relegating customer service to a dim, dusty closet in the back of the store, build huge, brightly lit counters positioned by the front door! Like New York stores attracting shoppers with Euros made fat by the devalued dollar, Midwest stores could lure streams of jaded shoppers from New York by advertising lower prices and upgraded shopping experience.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Usually, a trip to see family in the Midwest entails a relatively painless two hour nonstop flight but yesterday, as if to pay me back for a recent snarky post re. the industry, they cancelled my flight (withholding the news until I was at the airport, trying to check in eletronically when the kiosk flashed the ominous See Agent warning) and detoured me to Charlotte, NC where I waited for hours, which gave me time to discover that the Gracious South still exists in ladies rooms there. Incredibly, each is supplied with a trayful of treats for the Lady Traveller: hand cream, breath mints, tampons, Listerine. More incredibly to me, though the trays are unattended, takers take only a dainty amount.I finally made it to my destination (with soft skin and inoffensive breath) but the airline's vengeance continued: my bag stayed in Charlotte.

A wren couple built their house on the porch of our place in the country and for weeks we've had the pleasure of watching reality bird show: nest, little blue eggs, fuzzy wrenlets, wrenlets with feathers. When we went up this weekend, however, we were surprised that birds were still there--the babies are so big now that their wings flop out if the nest. So we got the opportunity to learn how a mother bird gets her grown offspring to fly the coop-- she stops enabling them with the food deliveries, instead keeps her distance, chirping encouragingly from a branch nearby until they finally summon the courage to try their own wings. No boomerangers allowed.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Al Gore gave a big speech about global warming last week. He was thunderous and prophetic. He said “the survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk.” So here’s a question: If the job is so huge and urgent, why is the ad campaign so pedestrian?

Mr. Gore himself has done more than anybody to put global warming on center stage, with just a PowerPoint presentation that became an Oscar-winning movie. So it’s vexing that his new campaign — so far, anyway — seems unlikely to break out of the pack of “green” advertising that, as The Times reported last week, is making consumers bored and skeptical.

There are plenty of planetary opinion leaders who could help him out...[like] whoever handled the Axe body spray contract, the one that somehow got millions of men in their 20s to obsess about personal odor management. Then you might have something.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Anticipation generated by the new i-phone was nothing compared to the excitement surrounding introduction of the first cell which, in 1989, came with only one feature (calling) in a handset the size and weight of a brick. Being an early adopter, I bought one. It still works great, as a doorstop.

Years later, cellphones offered more advanced features, but were still hefty enough to be used as assault weapons, as this spot for Sprint startlingly demonstrates. (note fine print disclaimer: Do not attempt.)

Friday, July 18, 2008

the most fashionable accent an American male could have at that time, namely, the spring of 1963. One achieved it by forcing all words out through the nostrils rather than the mouth. It was at once virile … and utterly affected.

The most Legendary Honker in the ad biz was David Ogilvy--who had the original, from London, the place from which so much of fashionable NY was imported in those days. Hear it in this rather surprising clip in which he opines on the superiority of direct advertising over general.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Seeing Bette Davis double feature at a theater the other night reminded me of how much better women of a certain economic strata had it in the old days: afternoon "beauty naps", closetsful of great looking "outfits" (no mom jeans), handsome hardbox luggage to haul the outfits around whenever you travelled, (of course, plenty of willing others to do the actual hauling, for coin tips), a maid AND a housekeeper being de rigueur, even if it was just you and a spouse living in a tiny house in Vermont.

For working women (meaning women without husbands), it was a different story. Only a few jobs were actually open to you: nurse, teacher, domestic labor, sales clerk, secretary. And just one business countenanced female execs--publishing. The only way to break in was as a secretary (NOT an admin) which basically meant being slave to your boss' whims and idiosyncrasies. This could be most daunting in the rare event your boss was a woman as illustrated by Joan Crawford in The Best of Everything who supposedly was the model Streep followed for The Devil Wears Prada. Anything that requires a personal reply goes here... not here, or here, but.. here...

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

What would induce sentient adults to stick their heads through the dirt floor of a toxic-smelling glass house, and do it in public, in full view of camera-toting strangers? A little sign at a museum that tells them to do so. I suspect that this installation at MassMoCA is less about art than it is grist for some psych experiment involving volunteers behind the scenes keeping track of people who oblige absent artist's request, people who don't.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Commenting on the bad news that airlines are squeezing additional revenue by selling space on boarding passes, Geo (who spent the day at an offsite and clearly had time on his hands) mused so eloquently about the future of air travel, I figured his comment deserved a post all its own.

Introducing Incremental Air.

Here's how it works, you pay just $69 for any seat on any plane to anywhere in the world. One seat, one flat fee.*

Delta Air Lines Inc. passengers checking in online for Las Vegas Tuesday will notice something new on their boarding passes: lots of ads...The move is just the latest attempt by cash-strapped airlines to generate more revenue -- this time by charging advertisers for fliers' eyeballs.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Just spoke with daughter in Beijing who reports rain, rain, rain. Why? They're shooting clouds with electricity to control the weather so that outlook for Olympics is blue skies & sun. (Word is, the tactic worked great for Bill Gates' recent visit.)

She also enlightened me on the hilarious translation error that Dear Jane Sample posted a few days ago. Chinese characters in the picture mean Cafeteria--my daughter is convinced that English-speaking printers amused themselves by printing up the mistake.

In other China news, this just in from Reuters:

Officials have issued a standard chanting routine that all Chinese spectators should employ during competitions (translated as "Olympics! Add fuel!" with two claps and then both thumbs up, then "China! Add fuel!" with two more claps and raised fists, according to a June Reuters dispatch). ("Add fuel" is apparently a traditional motivational chant in China.) (via StandUpDad via News of the Weird)

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Driving by this cemetery lit by gorgeous morning sun, where most of the stones seemed decades, even centuries old, I wondered--are graves becoming a thing of the past?

Have you noticed that funerals are becoming outré--er, passé (thanks for the catch, Fritinancy)--being replaced by the more fashionable memorial service or even-- increasingly, alarmingly, no service at all. Several relatives and a neighbor passed away this year and I was startled that their passing didn't merit any kind of group recognition. When I gently inquired about this, I was informed that "the person wouldn't have wanted a big deal made of his/her death." But aren't funerals actually meant for the living?

It may be last millenium, but just for the record--Friends and Family reading this: I want my exit observed with a jolly, rip-roaring party and an old-fashioned grave you'll feel obligated to visit. Condolences!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

The teenaged daughter of a friend just left for Nice where she'll be staying with a French family in a homestay program. (Oh, to live the life our kids do!)

The homestay family kindly emailed to ask if there were any rules they should abide by.

My friend doesn't speak French, but her ex-husband does, and, after discussion with her, he wrote a letter explaining their parenting customs. Unsure of his grammar, and a busy man, he wrote the letter in English, then put it through Google Translator to get the French version. This he sent to the homestay parents, cc'd to my friend.

My friend, eager to read the letter, re-Googled it to translate the French back to English. And was amused to discover her ex--(a professor of English)--sounding like someone who can't pass TOEFEL.

Please do not hesitate to ask a question about Katie once she arrives. Please do not count on it for information on what his parents do or not do it! You can get a bending of truth to meet their needs. I think you understand a parent yourself. Katie is a very nice girl and

Like many teenagers Katie likes to sleep late and at home, we need to tell him to wake up! I think it will be better on the behaviour with you!

When our daughter volunteered to make dinner, I reminded her where the cookbooks are. Cookbooks? she said, incredulous at me and my luddite ways.

Which is how I discovered SmittenKitchen, a food-porn site favorited by foodies everywhere, recipes from a writer/photographer who chronicles culinary adventures in the 80 sq. ft kitchen of her NYC tenement walkup. Even if you hate to cook, you'll be seized with sudden desire fling yourself at a stove.